My Small Potatoes

Sit and enjoy a cup of tea (or coffee) in the comfort of the Lord...   "Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice."   Ephesians  4:31

                                       My  Small  Potatoes
   "....reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin".....  Romans  6:11
  ".... Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone...."                                                                                             John  12:24

     I've just come into the house after digging a mess of potatoes in my garden.  I dug up something besides potatoes - I dug up a sermon as well!  The first hill of potatoes was a pleasant surprise for there were seven, beautiful, large potatoes, representing a real increase.  With enthusiasm I plunged the fork under the next plant and - what a disappointment, for all I found was three little scrawny ones as big (pardon me - as small) as marbles.  I soon saw the reason.  From some cause or another the original seed potatoes had failed to die.  There it was almost the way it had been planted four months before.  It didn't die and there was no fruit.  There can be no life without death - no fruit without sacrifice.

     Yes, I dug up a sermon in the potato patch.  In fact there were at least three sermons, one for each small potato. First, it speaks of the Lord Jesus who said,  "Except a corn of wheat die....it abideth alone."  Jesus was the grain of wheat which died, only to be resurrected in a host of believers as His fruit.

     There is a lesson for the sinner too.  Until the sinner dies to his own works and to his own efforts, merit, and righteousness, he cannot know life and be saved.  And finally, what a lesson for believers.  We too have been "planted in the likeness of His death"  (Romans  6:5).  This establishes our position and salvation.  But to become fruitful we must die to self.  We must put to death the works of the flesh (the flesh of our old nature), and if we "through the Spirit do mortify (put to death) the deeds of the body we shall live"  (Romans  8:13).

     Have a good crop of potatoes!

From the book, "Bread For Each Day"